Tag Archives: Jeannette Walls

There are several blogs that I love to visit (some on an almost-daily basis) and I’ve been re-visiting Tricia Sutton’s blog recently to RE-READ one of her posts about ‘hooks’ or first sentences in books. This idea appeals to me and each day as I sit down at my computer, my eyes roam the room (bordered by bookshelves with books higgedly-piggedly on the shelves) – thinking about the novels that draw in a reader with the first sentence or the first paragraph.

Today I am going to randomly scan the book shelves in our library/office, choose a dozen of them and then record the Hooks in Some of My Books.

1 – Cowboy Angst by Jasen Emmons

I was sitting on a padded stool at Fat Sam’s Saloon, tapping out paradiddles on the bar. The owner, Ray, was next to me, a squat man, all breasts and belly, sweating heavily into his madras shirt.

2 – Poker Face by Katy Lederer

Inside the bag, it was money. That was all. Hundreds in paper-banded bundles of $5,000. Back at home, it had been tens and twenties, but here in New York it was “C notes” and “Benjamins.” A stack of ten was called “a dime,” while only one was called “a dollar.”

3 – No Heroes by Chris Offutt

No matter how you leave the hills—the army, prison, marriage, a job—when you move back after twenty years, the whole county is carefully watching.

4 – The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant

The brindled sow stood in the corner, glowering at the boy. Jack Bondurant hefted a bolt-action .22 rifle with a deep blue octagon barrel, the stock chewed and splintered from brush and river stone. He chambered a round, walked over to the sow and put the end of the barrel about a foot from a pink eye and squeezed the trigger.

5 – Bullet Heart by Michael Doane

The dry Dakota wind is howling against Delores Her Many Horses’ ear. Yet when she awakens, she hears only the breathing of the white man next to her in bed.

6 – Give Us a Kiss by Daniel Woodrell

I had a family errand to run, that’s all, but I decided to take a pistol. It was just a little black thirty-two ladystinger and I tucked it into the blue pillowcase that held my traveling clothes.

7 – Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane

The first time I met Karen Nichols, she struck me as the kind of woman who ironed her socks.

8 – The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.

9 – The Great Man by Kate Christensen
“It’s amazing how well you can live on very little money,” said Teddy St. Cloud to Henry Burke over her shoulder as she strode into the kitchen of her Brooklyn row house. She hoped he was noticing that her hips and waist were still girlishly slender, her step youthful, and that he’d describe her accurately instead of saying she was “gaunt but chipper,” like that sour-faced squaw with the crooked teeth from The New Yorker who’d written the profile of Oscar a few years ago. “I hope you’re a Reform Jew,” she added. ‘I got prosciutto.”

10 – Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander

When I was a child, my parents and teachers told me about a man who was very strong. They told me he could destroy the whole world. They told me he could lift mountains. They told me he could part the sea. It was important to keep the man happy. When we obeyed what the man had commanded, the man liked us. He liked us so much that he killed anyone who didn’t like us. But when we didn’t obey what he had commanded, he didn’t like us. He hated us. Some days he hated us so much, he killed us; other days, he let other people kill us. We call these days “holidays.” On Purim, we remembered how the Persians tried to kill us. On Passover, we remembered how the Egyptians tried to kill us. On Chanukah, we remembered how the Greeks tried to kill us.

—Blessed is He, we prayed.

11 –South of Haunted Dreams by Eddy L. Harris

South of Owensboro, Kentucky, a wooden sign hangs from a rusted post. DAVIESS COUNTY COON HUNTERS’ CLUB, the sign says, and as I ride past, a cold hand touches the small of my back.

12 – The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the Terrace of The Dancers.

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Throw off the bowlines

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain

life is this simple

Life is this simple.

Life is this simple.
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent
and God is shining through it all the time.
This is not just a fable or a nice story
It is true.
If we abandon ourselves to God
and forget ourselves,
we see it sometimes
and we see it maybe frequently.
God shows Godself everywhere,
In everything,
In people and in things and in nature and in events.
It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and
in everything and we cannot be without God.
It is impossible.
The only thing is that we don't see it.
- Thomas Merton